Eddie Howe's Genius Change That Made Newcastle A Champions League Team
Newcastle United have qualified for the Champions League for the first time in 20 years. But after a mid-season wobble that saw them slip out of the top 4, Eddie Howe made a small but vital adjustment to their tactics that put them back on track.
Transcript
00:00 [Intro]
00:03 Newcastle United have qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the first time in 20 years and...
00:09 that's it. That's the intro.
00:10 Hello there everybody, Adam Cleary in his thoroughly justifiable weekday hangover for 442 here,
00:16 and if I may just be permitted this one thing...
00:18 "THE CHAMPIONS!"
00:22 Thank you.
00:22 So what are we here to talk about?
00:23 Well, first of all, how Newcastle United's qualification for the Champions League,
00:26 and I ain't getting bored of saying that any time soon, owes everything to Eddie Howe
00:31 very smartly identifying a problem with this starting XI and how and why he then changed it to this starting XI.
00:38 But also, and this is more just a through-line rather than anything I'm going to address directly,
00:41 how with just one season of reasonable investment and a little bit of ambition,
00:47 Newcastle United went from circling the drain of the Premier League to the top table of European football,
00:53 and how thus, Mike Ashley, you can go and...
00:55 [MUSIC]
00:59 In a hole!
00:59 [DING]
01:01 Okay, so I'm just going to set my stall out here with one sort of statement,
01:05 and if your reaction to that is, "Eh, what's he on about?" then just sort of go with it for a second.
01:09 That Newcastle United have finished the season in the top four, still incredible, by the way,
01:15 is a remarkable achievement, but that they were in the top four at the start of the year
01:20 was not a remarkable achievement. In fact, there was nothing special about that.
01:25 You see pretty much every single season, some teams that nobody expects emerge from the pack
01:29 and have a really good crack at breaking that top four.
01:32 Christmas Eve 2020, Leicester were second in the league, only four points behind Liverpool,
01:37 and Everton were ahead of Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester City in fourth.
01:41 The year before that, Leicester were once again in second place,
01:44 and Wolves were just two points behind Chelsea in fifth.
01:47 A few years before that, West Ham United and Southampton looked like they were going to contest the fourth spot
01:52 with Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool all miles off the pace.
01:55 And I mean, it could go on. I can remember Hull City doing it when they came up from the Championship.
01:59 I can remember Newcastle doing it under Pardew in what feels like an entire other life ago.
02:03 There's always teams that do what Newcastle did in the first half of the season.
02:09 But what inevitably seems to happen is they just can't make that last over an entire season.
02:14 Like, maybe they've got some incredibly clever system that other teams just start figuring out
02:18 and the results start to drop away. Maybe they just get a couple of injuries
02:22 and they don't have the same squad depth as the bigger clubs that are chasing them
02:25 and eventually they get overtaken. Whatever the reason is, the result is always the same.
02:30 This or some equally boring variation of it. The Big Six filling the top four.
02:35 And to be completely blunt, this was going to happen to Newcastle United.
02:38 It even started to happen to Newcastle United.
02:41 They had a major wobble around the same time as the League Cup final.
02:44 The results fell away, they stopped scoring goals, they stopped getting their clean sheets,
02:48 and they dropped out of the top four for the first time since they went into it.
02:52 And this, my friends, is why I want to make this video,
02:54 because I don't think anybody's really picked up on the change Eddie Howe made,
02:57 and I just think it deserves a little bit of appreciation.
03:01 So this is the Newcastle team from the first half of the season.
03:03 In fact, this is the team that lined up in their last game before the World Cup against Chelsea,
03:07 except I've cheered slightly because that was Chris Wood,
03:10 but it was only because Wilson wasn't fully fit. He would have started.
03:12 And what this team would always go out to do was to play as much of the game as possible
03:15 in this area of the pitch here, the opponent's defensive third.
03:19 They would hound defenders, hound goalkeepers, hound midfielders.
03:22 They would put as much pressure on in this area as they could,
03:25 and they were known as a high-pressing, counter-attacking side.
03:28 Now, this style of play undoubtedly caught a lot of teams out in the first part of the season,
03:31 but they continued with it after the World Cup,
03:33 and the results started to drop off as teams began to expect it.
03:37 Following the Leicester City game at the resumption of the season,
03:39 Newcastle United had a Premier League run-in of
03:42 Leeds United, Arsenal, Fulham, Crystal Palace, West Ham and Bournemouth.
03:46 Now, with the exception of Arsenal, those are probably all games that any side with top-four aspirations
03:50 should be targeting three points from, but Newcastle only managed one win in that entire run,
03:55 a last-minute goal from Alexander Isak,
03:57 taking what was certainly going to look like a 0-0 draw into a scraped-through 1-0 win.
04:02 Now, their defending, which had been the bedrock of this success, was absolutely still there.
04:05 They only conceded two goals in this entire run, but at the same time, they only scored three.
04:10 Leeds, Fulham, Palace, West Ham, Bournemouth, these were all teams that now knew what to expect from Newcastle,
04:14 were defending really deep, were basically treating it like they were going to the Eddie Harder Anfield
04:19 and grinding out, or getting very close to grinding out, little results.
04:22 They went away to the Eddie Hard in March, got beat, dropped out of the top five,
04:26 and this is where it reasonably looked like it was all going to start to unravel
04:29 and they were going to filter back down, sort of in that sort of 10th to 6th area of the table.
04:34 But Eddie Howe took a look at his team and took a look at his system and he thought,
04:37 "You know what? If they're starting to get the answers, I'm going to change the questions."
04:41 Alright, so I actually only discovered this the other day and this absolutely blew my mind.
04:44 This is Newcastle United, the high-pressing, counter-attacking side,
04:47 who want to win the ball back in this area of the pitch, right?
04:50 Well, if we look here, this is every single high turnover they had made this season,
04:55 right up to them dropping out of the top four against Man City.
04:58 Now, that's a lot of high turnovers. They were really, really good at winning the ball back.
05:02 In fact, if we look here, they ranked as one of the best teams in the league
05:05 for winning the ball in the defensive third.
05:07 But now, and gird your loins for this, this is every single one of those turnovers that led to a shot
05:13 and this is every single one of those shots that led to a goal.
05:16 And that is not good.
05:18 In fact, they go from being one of the best teams in the league at winning the ball back in the defensive third
05:22 to being one of the worst teams in the league for converting high turnovers into shots and goals.
05:28 And the reason for that is simple. Teams were defending incredibly deep,
05:31 knowing they were going to get pressed high by Newcastle,
05:33 so if they did lose the ball, they still had lots of players in that area,
05:37 so Newcastle didn't get an open chance.
05:39 And this might sound slightly harsh, but teams knew this might work
05:42 because Newcastle didn't have the individual quality on the pitch to play through it.
05:46 As a team, they are brilliant at the high press, but as individuals,
05:49 they can't then make things happen out of nothing.
05:51 Like, if you think back to when Liverpool were the undeniable masters of this,
05:54 you could very well put 10 players behind the ball, so you can crowd around it if you lose it.
05:58 But players like Mo Salah can weave through three or four players
06:01 and score improbable goals with amazing finishes.
06:04 Newcastle have the players to enact the system, but not the individuals to do that.
06:09 So, let's say you're Eddie Howe. What do you do in this situation?
06:12 You've got a team that you know are really good at pressing the ball high,
06:15 stopping teams playing out from the back, but said teams are now defending so deep
06:19 that you're no longer able to convert any of that into goal-scoring opportunities.
06:23 What do you do? How do you somehow fix what is going wrong without ruining what is going right?
06:29 That is the challenge he faced in March.
06:31 And what he decided to do was not change the fact that Newcastle United were a pressing team,
06:35 but to change the reason why they were a pressing team.
06:39 Instead of Newcastle pressing teams in their own defensive third to try and win the ball back
06:43 and create chances, because they weren't scoring from those chances,
06:45 he wanted to press them in this area to stop them building up from the back
06:49 and to force them to go long.
06:51 And the reason you do that is because if teams can't get their build-up going
06:54 and can't play through you, and they go more direct into the middle area of the pitch,
06:58 that then forces them to push up as a unit and congests the whole game in this area.
07:04 And if the whole game is being congested in this area,
07:07 then that means what Newcastle can do instead of counter-attacking in high pressing
07:11 is they can have what's known as direct attacks.
07:14 Oh, there's the jargon terminology alarm.
07:16 A direct attack is basically anything that starts in your half of the pitch
07:19 and within 15 seconds allows you to get a chance on goal.
07:23 Now, the best example of this is Fabian Scher and Joe Linton against West Ham.
07:26 You remember that goal. Everything was compressed into the middle area of the pitch.
07:30 Newcastle weren't trying to press high or play through.
07:32 They just got the ball to Scher in this area.
07:34 He played one direct ball into Joe Linton,
07:36 and because there was space in behind against a team, West Ham, remember,
07:39 who probably would have sat off Newcastle and defended otherwise,
07:42 he got through and he scored.
07:43 But the other best way to illustrate this is the changes in personnel.
07:47 Miggi Almiron was absolutely invaluable to Newcastle in the first half of the season.
07:52 He got injured, Jacob Murphy came in,
07:54 and when Almiron came back, he couldn't get Murphy out of the team.
07:58 And the reason for that is because Miggi Almiron has the numbers and statistics
08:01 to be the absolute perfect right-sided attacker
08:04 for a team that are trying to press and win the ball back
08:06 and create chances in the opposition third.
08:07 He's just a live wire of energy.
08:09 But the one thing, the one thing that Jacob Murphy does that Miguel Almiron doesn't
08:15 is he carries the ball from your half into the opposition's half
08:18 and tries to make chances as a result.
08:20 Like generally progressive carries, they're known at.
08:22 Murphy nearly makes five every single game.
08:25 He is almost in the top 10% of midfielders in Europe for that stat.
08:30 Whereas Miggi Almiron is just not his game.
08:32 He makes just over two of them per game.
08:34 He's in the bottom half of all players in Europe for that.
08:36 It's why from March until he got injured,
08:38 Alan St. Maximand was starting pretty much every single game.
08:41 Yes, he's not going to give you the defensive solidity that Joe Linton was providing
08:44 in that area of the pitch,
08:45 but what he is going to do, he's going to get the ball and he's going to run with it.
08:48 And just purely from a numbers perspective,
08:50 Alan St. Maximand's had an absolutely rotten season for Newcastle
08:53 compared to the standards he set,
08:54 but the two things he is still doing really well on are,
08:57 you're not going to believe this,
08:58 carries and take-ons.
08:59 He is still, despite how bad a year he's had,
09:02 in the top 1% in European leagues for doing that.
09:07 And yeah, I mean they conceded a lot more goals,
09:08 but that's just the price you pay.
09:10 Like you're playing the game in this area of the pitch more than you're playing it in this area of the pitch,
09:14 which is a lot closer to your own goal.
09:16 And you're sacrificing players who do a great job and never let you down
09:19 and are defensively switched on for those who are just great with the ball at their feet.
09:24 You can run, you can make things happen,
09:25 you can take those opportunities when they present themselves.
09:28 That's the job of a manager.
09:29 That's the risks you have to take.
09:31 And again, for all Eddie Howe was like,
09:32 "Oh, I don't think Wilson and Isak should really be playing together.
09:35 We see Isak is more playing through the middle."
09:36 When he saw how good at dribbling and how good on the ball
09:39 and how good at taking people on Isak was,
09:42 he got into that left side of the pitch
09:43 and he made the position his own
09:44 because that's what he wanted those white players to do.
09:47 So there you go.
09:48 That's how Eddie Howe took the unremarkable achievement
09:50 of getting into the top four in one half of the season
09:53 and turned it into the absolutely unbelievable,
09:55 "Has this actually happened?
09:56 Am I going to Italy?" achievement
09:59 of finishing in the top four by the end of the Premier League season.
10:02 But I desperately need to take two Paracetamol now.
10:04 So everybody, please let me know what you make of all of this in the comments below.
10:07 And if you haven't got any insightful opinions,
10:09 just say the name of a city in Europe you'd like to go to this season
10:12 because that'll put a massive big grin on my massive big face.
10:16 But in the meantime though, thank you very much for watching.
10:18 If you did enjoy this video, please do share it around to all your friends.
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10:23 And if you're having a nice time here,
10:25 please do subscribe to the channel
10:26 because we're going to be doing all this stuff over the summer
10:28 and I can't wait.
10:29 If you'd like to catch me on Twitter, you can @AdamGleeryClery.
10:32 I do dearly love to hear from you all.
10:33 And ooh, what's that?
10:34 New 442, World's Greatest Football Magazine,
10:37 about to drop in shops probably by the time this video goes out.
10:40 So be on the lookout for that.
10:42 But until next time, this has been 442.